March On!

Perhaps Jitu Brown, reflecting on the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, of the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization said it best when he described what it was like for his son to attend school.   "Fifty years later we still have young people being escorted to school [remember James Meredith at Oxford or Little Rock] by armed guard.  My son should not have to walk next to a police officer in 2013 when there is a perfectly good school across the street from his house."

Hard to argue with this. Oh, some people might but my guess is that they don't live under such conditions as those described by Mr. Brown.   Jitu was commenting on the education of his son in light of the 1-day school boycott which saw hundreds of activists descend upon CPS headquarters to protest various conditions and lament the school closings and dwindling budgets of individual schools.

As I sit here in the comfort of my home I wonder if much will change in the next fifty years.  Yes, social progress has been made but economic progress has been a dream gone adrift for far too many people.   It is a fact, not conjecture, that the poor are getting poorer and the number of poor is exploding.

A lack of jobs, low pay, having too little money to provide for ones health care and nutritious food and making ends meet are emblematic of the lack of economic progress.   For people to take part and achieve the 'American Dream' things will have to change.

Dick